Ask HN: How to know what you want to do for the rest of your life.

I'm in my 50s and still don't know this answer. But that is OK. Your life will have different chapters, and there is nothing wrong with that. Do what works for now... change when it stops working.

Be extremely primitive in your thinking.

I thought I would love to be a programmer. I didn't start programming until I was 28. I loved programming. I loved building things and solving tough problems that saved me time or automated real world problems away.

It turns out I still love programming nearly 2 decades later, but not for work. I grew to loathe it. I had a deep passion for programming, but most of my peers did not. Most of my peers never really seemed to learn to program and so when presented with a tough problem all they knew was to find some tool or framework to do it for them.

So, moral of the story is dig deeper. Thinking about programming was not deep enough. I wanted to build things, so I should have started from that and looked for jobs where I would be building things, and programming in the corporate world typically is not that.

Why not taking a break if you are really burned out. I think it is a good thing that you feel that something is missing or wrong. That might be something other people ignore all the time. I wouldn't leave everything, maybe a holiday for some weeks could be enough. No reason to be extreme here. Use the time to breathe and think about what moves you inside. Listen to your gut feeling and think about ways to realistically implement your wishes in day to day life. Maybe a side hustle? What are you good at? What value can you bring to others? If it turns out that you have to leave everything for what you discovered, think of ways how to do it in real life. I like the fear setting concept [1] by Tim Ferriss. This helped me sometimes when I had doubts about implementing changes.

[1] https://mindfulambition.net/fear-setting-tim-ferriss/

Right these thoughts make me feel bad. I dont want to be from second group but i think i am from that group, at least till now.

One angle that I almost never see career-related posts talk about is what your daily life is like for various positions. Everyone tends to focus on the intellectual content of work, but rarely what the work environment is like, where you have to live, etc.

For example – the vast majority of tech jobs require one to sit at a desk in an office. There are ways around it, including remote jobs, standing desks, and walk pads, but basically if you're a tech worker, you're in a room staring at a screen for 6+ hours a day.

So, from this perspective, I would suggest thinking about what kind of day makes you happy and fulfilled. Is it one that involves talking to a lot of people? Walking around an urban area? Being alone in the forest? Put the intellectual content of what you're doing aside.

Personally, as much as I love tech stuff, I have grown to really dislike the default work environment. Being a bike messenger or a sailor, while having nearly zero relation to technology, seem like much more enjoyable professions on a day-to-day basis. This has led me to experimenting with various work "formats" that combine physical activity with computer work, ranging from take my laptop to a cafe to use a standing desk and exercise bicycle.